


take this sinking boat and point it home

by lissidoll



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Angst, Beating, Bruises, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Trauma, except i broke it first
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-02 22:17:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15805638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lissidoll/pseuds/lissidoll
Summary: 'Now he began to train with his father, who would sometimes patrol the back court with a stop-watch in his hands, timing sets of cross-court forehands or down the line backhands. "He had a very Soviet way of doing physical training sessions,' Zverev says. "...I didn't like them. But I'd seen my brother doing it, so I thought this was normal. I thought this was something everyone was doing.'"Sascha's been training to be the best at tennis for his whole life. Novak finds out what that actually means.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Gah. I haven't written in ages but I read the Economist article about Sascha's training with his father and this idea got lodged in there and wouldn't shift. Then Novak gave him a lift to Cincy and it came together. I'm sorry. I can't resist breaking Sascha to put him back together.
> 
> Updates...whenever. I'll try not to leave it too long.
> 
> Warnings: abuse from childhood (specifically being 'disciplined' with a belt, **not** sexual). Implied past struggles with depression at some point.
> 
> Disclaimer: NOT NOT NOT true, not real, didn't happen, don't want it to have happened (I made myself sad so many times writing this), don't own anything.

 

_take this sinking boat and point it home_

* * *

* * *

 

 

**_now_ **

 

By the third delay to boarding, Novak’s severely regretting his noble decision to fly commercial instead of booking the God damn jet.

Usually he baulks at the indulgence when it’s just him and a handful of his team, when he doesn’t have the entourage of kids and dogs and bags overspilling with nappies to haul along and trying to squeeze everyone into first class would be blatant cruelty to the unsuspecting flight crew. But today it’s just him and Marian, fresh flown in from Europe, and Gebhard who couldn’t care less what they do as long as Novak isn’t abusing his serving muscles back in coach. Added to the fact that Jelena read an article in June about the contribution of airline travel to climate change and Novak’s tired of the prim disapproval over their Skype calls when he tentatively mentions that, this time, it might be better for his tennis if he upgrades his travel – he’d figured that, this once, suffering through first class wouldn’t be the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

He hadn’t accounted for the aftermath of losing twice in two days, the way his temper goes fragile as eggshells when he’s mad at himself and even the attendant taking an extra five seconds to study his boarding pass at the lounge door had him biting his tongue. In future, he’s going to weight the consequences of getting kicked off his flight for making a scene in an airport against the leaden silence of Jelena’s annoyance.

The latter will still be the worse option but at least he can fool himself into thinking he’d _chosen_.

When the screen over the bar in the corner of the first class lounge flashes from the ticking-upward estimated departure time to an unhelpful and unspecified DELAYED, he drops his head back on his seat and breathes out hard to keep himself from shouting out loud. Fuck. Maybe he should give up on the idea of winning any more tennis next week and hit up the barman for a martini. They have olives so they’re practically a healthy meal, and it’s not like he’s ever managed to win fucking Cincinnati anyway.

But- ‘No, Nole,’ Marian says when Novak’s gaze drifts speculatively to the display of bottles. He doesn’t look up from the trashy crime novel he’s reading this week; Novak must just be that predictable when he’s murderously bored. Gebhard’s sacked out in the chair next to him snoring softly, so there’ll be no help from that quarter. ‘If you get drunk they will not let you on the plane and I will have to play your first round Cincy match for you. No one want that.’

‘At least that would be more entertaining than letting my muscles atrophy here in this chair,’ Novak grumbles. ‘At this rate we miss first match anyway, we may as well fly to New York now.’

Which is better than his reflex want to say, _you would most likely play better than me in Cincinnati anyway._ Marian doesn’t tolerate defeatism, which Novak appreciates most of the time. Sometimes though, he’d like to indulge in an old fashioned sulk.

Rehashing their two-year-old fight about his attitude sounds like an excellent way to get kicked out of the lounge though, so instead he adds, ‘Anyone would think they forget that they are a travel service, not only a place where people wait until they die of old age. What can possibly- oh.’

Marian does look up at that last, the flick upward of surprise in Novak’s tone. ‘What?’

‘It’s Sascha,’ Novak says and waves to the German, sliding in through the lounge door with a furtive glance around. He can’t be sneaking in; the same attendant that tested Novak’s temper is still checking passes at the desk but when Sascha catches sight of them, his face falls for an instant.

‘What’s up with him?’ Marian murmurs, so he caught it too. Novak tries not to frown as Sascha walks toward them with every sign of reluctance, bag dangling stiffly from one hand instead of over his shoulder. Maybe he picked up an injury when he lost to Stefanos, which means he might be the only player having a worse week than Novak.

‘Hey Sascha,’ Novak says as he comes over. The next thing off his tongue is going to be something stupidly flippant, _fancy seeing you here_ or _welcome to the first annual meeting of the We Hate Tsitsipas Club,_ until Sascha lifts his gaze from the (truly hideous) airport carpet and what actually comes out of Novak’s mouth, unfiltered, is ‘Wow, you look like all of Canada beat you up.’

‘I’m fine,’ Sascha says briefly. Which is the most blatant fucking lie because he’s a greyish shade of pale that’s not helped by the fluorescent lights but can’t be entirely blamed on them either. It makes the puffy exhausted circles under his eyes stand out in stark misery, eyes themselves red-rimmed in a way that suggests he’s not slept all night or cried non-stop since his match, or both.

But – Novak’s seen Sascha cry when he’s furious with himself for losing, sure, but it’s a few tears he wipes quietly on his sleeve in the locker room. He’s too buoyed with confidence, too young to question the longevity of his meteoric rise in the rankings, and never the kind of player who curls into a corner of the showers to sob his heart out after a match. This wasn’t even that terrible a loss; it’s not a Slam, and while it sucks to lose the ranking points, there’s no real reason for Sascha to look like he’s been run over by a truck.

And yet. Novak’s not certain that, if he nudged Sascha gently right now, the German wouldn’t fall over.

He tucks the thought that a Sascha Zverev this miserable will be easy to beat in Cincinnati right far down, the unkindness of it folded up and slid out of sight beneath his ribs. He’s not a total dick and off-court Sascha’s been nothing but charming to Novak since he was five years old; Novak likes him, as much as he likes any player who’s beaten him in finals.

Instead he says, neutrally friendly because sympathy would be too close to pity,

‘You should sit down anyway. We may be here so long even you have to retire. I am debating if I should offer to fly the plane myself since they seem to have forgotten how.’

Sascha frowns. ‘...Can you do that?’

‘No he cannot,’ Marian says with weary patience, turning a page in his book. Novak’s not fooled; he can see his coach watching the German surreptitiously over the pages, faintly calculating, and Novak knows he’s thinking of the Cincinnati draw too, how well it might’ve gone this time for Novak when he was so close to playing Sascha himself. Novak wonders idly if Sascha would’ve looked this devastated if it’d be Novak he lost to, or if it’s the humiliation of being beaten by someone younger.

If it’s the latter, Novak could tell him with the weight of bitter experience that he’ll have to get used to it.

Watching Marian watch Sascha though, he catches his coach’s speculative look turn into a frown. Before Novak can catch his eye, try to ask _what?_ with just his eyebrows, his coach lowers his book and says,

‘It’s okay Sascha. Sit down and wait with us.’

It’s the tone he uses when Novak’s genuinely sick and not just dragging his feet in boredom, the coaxingly gentle voice he uses after crushing Slam defeats. He never uses it on anyone else that Novak’s heard, certainly never other players and Novak looks back at Sascha in surprise, wondering what he missed – only to catch the sway to Sascha’s stance, the way his hand trembles around his bag strap before he lets it thump to the floor and Novak re-evaluates his impression from _upset_ , to _devastated._

Fuck. It’s just a loss, just a Masters the week after winning another title; even Sascha, full of the mad competitiveness all the players haul around with them like excess baggage, should know better than to take it this badly. They were all young enough to feel every single loss like the end of the world once but Novak grew out of it, just like Roger and Rafa and everyone else who’d been on tour more than five minutes, and Sascha’s lived in it, with them, his whole life; there’s always the next match, the next tournament, the next hunger beating beneath their ribs like a second heartbeat. Losses sting but then, apart from the handful of bitterness they all carry for certain losses – Roger to Rafa in the darkness of London in 2008, Andy sobbing on the screen in 2012 and Novak had fumbled almost-frantic to turn it off, knowing with sickening guilt that some of those tears were because of him – apart from those few, they yell, they throw a few racquets, and they move on.

Sascha’s not moving anywhere – looks too pale and exhausted, too broken, to even try.

Without reaching out the hand he desperately wants to offer, knowing it’d be too insulting to Sascha’s pride, Novak says as lightly as he can make it, ‘Hey, sit and stop giving me a bad neck from staring upward yeah? We can be bored together. Are you waiting on your parents?’

Halfway into the seat opposite, Sascha flinches. Not much, just enough to miss his grip on the seat arm and drop the last inch into the seat with a thump that makes his breath hiccup, obviously trying to hide a grimace.

Fuck, has something happened? Novak knows Mischa flew back to Monte Carlo, and they’ve all heard Sascha rambling excitedly about being an uncle soon; if something’s wrong, Novak’s going to feel like a right bastard for worrying about tennis matches.

But Sascha’s shaking his head – though that could be _don’t want to talk about it_ rather than _nothing to talk about._

‘No,’ he says, and he’s a shit liar, Novak spotting the way his eyes flick guiltily toward the door. ‘My mother’s flying home to stay with Mischa and Evi a few days, and my dad’s waiting with her until she boards. Figured I’d get myself an upgrade, at least enjoy something about my day.’

‘You too eh?’ Novak smiles at him, easy and rueful to keep the worry off his face. If he’d looked as rough as Sascha does now, Marian would’ve handcuffed them together rather than let Novak wander off on his own.

Maybe Sascha’s fought with his parents, although that’s dubious odds; Novak’s never seen anyone as obedient to their parents’ demands as the Zverev siblings (Novak thinks of himself and his brothers, running wild in Serbia’s snowy mountains much to the irritation of the tourists, and makes a mental note to buy his parents something truly spectacular for Christmas).

Sascha on the other hand, apart from running perpetually twenty minutes late to everything in his entire life, almost snaps to attention when his father makes suggestions in practice. Novak once looked out of his hotel room window, restless and insomniac at three in the morning, to see Sascha wearing only shorts and t-shirt in the damp chill of a rainy night, running sprints across the empty hotel tennis courts with his father standing under the floodlights holding a stopwatch.

When Novak mentioned it to Gebhard the following morning – wondering if he was missing out on a new training technique – Gebhard had frowned and said, briefly, ‘Very stupid. You would ache all over next day, fuck up your sleep,’ and sure enough, Sascha had lost to a qualifier a day later, smashing racquets and cursing at Mo who regarded him calmly from the umpire’s chair, quietly totting up the fines.

Maybe Papa Zverev finally tried to make Sascha run sprints up Everest or something equally ridiculous and he baulked. In which case it’s a win-win for Novak to help out because he can sympathise more than most of the tour with how it feels to hit a wall and need a break, and also if Sascha’s shirking training then Novak’s definitely going to beat him for the rest of the summer.

Decision made, he digs his phone out of his pocket and thumbs open his second speed dial.

‘You could not have decided that an hour ago,’ Marian murmurs, too fond for it to sting. Phone already to his ear, Novak sticks his tongue out at his coach.

‘But then Sascha would’ve been stuck here by himself,’ he says and flashes a smile at Sascha, watching him with cautious suspicion. ‘I am bored of this so I am booking the jet. You’re welcome to hitch a lift. Your dad also unless he has to wait.’

Surprise ripples across Sascha’s face, lifting the weight of misery briefly. ‘I-what? You are bored of waiting so you book a jet, just like that?’

Well- yeah. Sometimes Sascha is so self-assured and mature, been familiar background scenery for so long, that Novak forgets he hasn’t won a double handful of Slams and been successful on tour long enough to make private jets a normal, if indulgent, occurrence.

‘Call it one you owe me when you win your first Wimbledon,’ Novak says with a smile that’s barely teasing at all and is distracted enough by his assistant answering, ‘What do you want _now_ Mr Djokovic?’ that he can’t catch if the look crossing Sascha’s face is confusion or wistfulness.

First things first. ‘Amanda oh light of my life,’ he carols into the phone and is about to present his assistant with a masterpiece of a coaxing sob story about delays and crippling airport chairs and how sad his good friend Sascha is – he knows she thinks Sascha’s pretty; she likes all his Instagram posts, made a rude noise when Novak asked why she never liked _his_ – when she cuts him off, crisp in her cut-glass British accent.

‘The jet is waiting for you at the usual gate. I’ve notified them now that you’re on the way so the captain will be completing the pre-flight checks and ready to go if you head down there now.’

Novak pauses, tripping over the half-formed story he’d had all ready and polished. ‘But- I told you I didn’t want the jet. You booked our tickets!’

‘Mr Djokovic-’

‘ _Novak_. Nole, if you are capable of removing the stick from your behind.’

‘Mr _Djokovic_ , this is the fifteenth time you’ve asked me not to book the jet and then called me later to change your mind,’ she says with the weary resignation of competent administration assistants the world over. ‘The charge for holding the plane on standby is less than getting you bumped up the departure schedule. They’re waiting, so you should hurry. I hear you play a sport or something so I’m sure you’re capable of running.’

‘...Mandy, I love you. I get you the best Christmas present,’ Novak promises, laughing for the first time all day, and she makes one of her amused sounds of derision that Novak delights in collecting.

‘Of course you will. I already ordered it for myself,’ she says and hangs up on him, which Novak’s sure breaks about twenty agency rules and makes him resolve to send her another embarrassingly large bouquet of flowers. Something dyed luminous pink so the whole office will notice; the few times he’s met her in person she’s been wearing glitter Docs and flawless winged eyeliner, the suggestion of tattoos beneath the pressed cuffs of her thousand-dollar-suit so he always sends bright colours and the strangest, spikiest flowers the service offers, the ones that look weird and threatening and beautiful. They both solemnly maintain the pretence that she hates them but she always puts them on Instagram, anyway.

‘That was Novak’s PA at IMG,’ Marian’s telling Sascha, who obviously caught enough of the conversation to be utterly bemused, eyes wide. ‘She keep him from flying to wrong city or missing sponsor events, or losing his luggage. Once she make him cry, it was very beautiful.’

‘She did not _make_ me cry,’ Novak grumbles, standing up with a groan and a stretch; even in first class, airport lounges are a recipe for a stiff back. ‘I was tired and she was the only one who was to be helpful when all of you were not capable of coaching a mid-rate junior and I _may_ have been grateful enough to sniff a little, that is all.’ He starts to collect his hoodie and his headphones, pretending not to notice Marian’s wink at Sascha and whisper,

‘He cry like a tiny baby and spend his entire next match win money to send her new shoes. Sometimes I worry that he fire me again and hire her as a coach instead.’

‘The thought cross my mind every day,’ Novak says with the bland deadpan he’s daring to use again with Marian now, months past begging him to come back as his coach and accepting, mostly, that Marian’s forgiven him. The stiff politeness of the first few weeks back together, Novak had accepted as his rightful punishment for firing Marian in the first place but that hadn’t made it any less excruciating.

Now when he grins at his coach, he’s back to at least ninety percent confidence that Marian will grin back, easy and without any shadow of hesitation, as fond of Novak as he always was. He does just that now when Novak gestures at the snoring Gebhard.

‘In fact,’ Novak says, ‘you have had it easy being on holiday this week. I think I need convincing again why I should listen to you, which is why I let you be the one to wake him and get yelled at. Bye, see you at the plane! Come on Sascha.’

‘What?’ Sascha says over Marian’s theatrical grumbling that waking sleeping bears wasn’t in his contract, he can still _quit_ you know. Sascha ignores him with the true focus of a tennis player shutting out distractions (except of course when it’s convenient to hold up play by complaining about the crowd), staring at the hand Novak has outstretched to help him up as if it might be concealing a rattlesnake. ‘Are you sure? You don’t have to ask me just because I am here.’

‘ _Sascha_ ,’ Novak says with an eye roll and an impatient wriggle of his fingers, ‘if I know you fly same time as me then I would ask you before already. Is no trouble. Do you need to call your dad, ask him as well?’

And he didn’t mean _for permission_ but something in Sascha’s beautiful, exhausted face goes hard, falling into a sullen set of his mouth that looks more like an expression Kyrgios would wear. Novak very carefully doesn’t let his concern show.

‘No I don’t,’ Sascha says after a second too long and takes Novak’s hand, his fingers cool despite the stuffy air. When Novak hauls him to his feet, he pretends not to hear the involuntary gasp of pain.

Definitely injured. Maybe his family think he should pull out of Cincy and Sascha’s defying them by flying there anyway. Maybe it’s finally time for a tiny Zverev rebellion – trust Sascha to rebel by trying to play _more_ tennis rather than shirk his responsibilities – and by sort-of-not-really-but-still-sort-of kidnapping him, Novak’s inadvertently contributing to family drama.

None of which is Novak’s problem, he tells himself. This isn’t a tour problem, or a tennis problem; this is family and the inner workings of another player’s team, the sacrosanct territory where Novak has no right of trespass. He’s just the taxi service to Cincinnati; Sascha’s a big boy now, all grown up with his Masters titles and sponsorships and growing army of fans. If he doesn’t want to confide in Novak then Novak knows from personal experience, the memory of the days when every unwanted word felt like rough hands peeling his skin from his bones and he couldn’t explain to anyone how swinging a racquet felt like moving mountains with his bare hands, that pushing for an answer won’t help.

He keeps hold of Sascha’s hand a few moments longer than necessary though, giving it a brief squeeze before he lets it drop to push through the door. He’s been the one sitting in an airport lounge, alone and trying not to cry, more times than he cares to count in the last few years, and the unnerving quality of Sascha’s silence is nothing more than an echo of his own misery all those times.

By the time they land in Ohio and Sascha goes to his own hotel room, back to his own drama and whatever shouting is going to happen behind closed doors, Novak will have filed this away with the other quiet incidents throughout the year that, by reciprocal silent agreement, they all conceal from the press. The pressure cooker that is the tennis tour doesn’t lend itself to constant harmony; there’s snipes and fights every day, thrown racquets and screaming fights with coaches audible through thin hotel walls, players lashing out after crushing losses and most players knew the unspoken tour rule, that if you find even your greatest rival slumped drunk outside your hotel room door, you either drag them back to their room or give them a bed in yours so the pictures won't be in the newspapers in the morning.

Novak’s not making this his problem by offering a lift. He’s just being polite.

He checks over his shoulder every minute or so on the trek across the terminal to their new gate, slowing the pace when Sascha starts to stumble and lag behind.

Just to be polite, that’s all.

 

*

 

_**then** _

 

The first time happens when Sascha is thirteen. He’s full of promising fire and optimism despite limbs that grow in gawky rather than stocky, lighting up the court with his ground strokes and thrown racquets. Everything moves too slow for him and he wants, he burns with the wanting, impatient for the success he’s so sure is right there if he can just get his forehand working properly. Everything is right there, just beyond his grasping fingertips.

‘Sascha,’ his father says at the end of a long day, a longer training session. Sascha’s run ten kilometres in sprints and he’s so exhausted that the world feels like it’s dissolving into water, rolling beneath his new Adidas trainers. When he looks up at his father sweat runs into his eyes, softens all the world’s edges until he blinks it away.

‘What?’ Sascha asks with only faint reluctance. His overworked muscles are trembling but he’s so close, so frustrated with his progress. He’s getting older and even with everything in reach, right there, it won’t be there forever; he needs to get better footwork, control his awkward limbs better, to be _better._ If his father needs him to run another ten kilometres he’ll do it, even if he faints at five. Mischa’s away in Paris with their mother so there’s no one to look askance at his father for letting Sascha train, what they say is, too hard. ‘I’m ready. What next?’

‘Yesterday,’ his father says, one word as he hands Sascha a towel and Sascha’s immediately suffused with shame.

 _Yesterday_ he’d lost, only a small club tournament he should’ve breezed through and he’d been beaten in straight sets by a visiting Italian boy, two years older and beautiful in the smooth slide of his footwork across the court, the spray of bitter orange clay the same as the leaves overhead slowly fading into autumn. Another year sliding past and Sascha couldn’t beat an amateur who’ll never amount to anything. He’ll run another ten kilometres, twenty; he’ll climb mountains and hit a thousand serves a day, if only to escape the creeping fear that maybe none of it will ever be enough.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ he whispers. He twists the towel between his hands and stares at the court so his father won’t see the belligerent jut of his jaw; his father doesn’t indulge sulking, unlike his mother who can always tell the difference between petulance and Sascha fighting back sincere tears. ‘I’ll do better,’ he says, furious when he feels his lip tremble with misery. ‘I can train harder, I need more muscle, that’s all-’

‘Muscle will come in time,’ his father says. Sascha looks up at that because the words were kind but the tone was cool, the detached displeasure he adopts which is so much more effective than his mother’s scolding because Sascha’s never quite sure what to say to mitigate it. Sometimes, faced with his father’s rare annoyance, he thinks in the deep, dark recesses of himself that his father only loves him as a tennis player, that if Sascha can’t learn to live up to the expectation then he’ll always be a disappointment.

His father’s been watching him closely all through practice today. Sascha thought it was because of yesterday, trying to work out how to fix the way Sascha slumped in focus mid second-set. But if his father doesn’t blame him for losing, then-

‘What’s the matter?’ he asks, tremulously because his father’s still looking at him with that calm, disappointed air. Almost as if Sascha’s let him down in some way but he’s still trying, still training, it’s not _fair._ ‘Tell me what I need to do to be better and I’ll do it, I can do anything it takes.’

‘Like break racquets,’ his father says and Sascha blanches.

He’d thought he’d hidden the pieces, behind the locker rooms after, thought maybe his father hadn’t been watching at that moment when it hadn’t been mentioned over dinner. He’d been so upset yesterday and it’d been an old racquet. Excuses pile up, tight in Sascha’s throat, and looking at the way his father’s staring at him with his arms folded, Sascha knows none of them will be worth the breath he’d use to sound them – breath that’s misting in Hamburg’s chilly air now, raising gooseflesh along Sascha’s still frustratingly-thin arms. The club’s gone quiet around them as twilight’s been creeping in, darkness erasing the tramlines and corners, and Sascha’s sniff against threatening tears is the only sound.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mutters. ‘I’ll buy a new one.’

His father ignores the offer because they both know Sascha couldn’t afford it. Instead he says, as if Sascha only apologised, ‘I want you to think about how sorry you are on the way home. About what it means to be allowed to do this anywhere in the world, as a privilege. To travel and represent your family.’

He pauses long enough that Sascha becomes aware of his own shivering, the cold numbing his fingertips, before his father says, ‘and then, when we get home, you’ll fetch my belt from the closet and you’ll wear a reminder of the privilege for as long as it takes for you to focus better.’

Sascha frowns, confused. ‘You’re making me wear your belt?’

‘You’ll wear the imprint of it, like I did, for as long as it takes,’ his father clarifies with bewildering calm and, while Sascha’s still stuck in the confusion and fast-rising shock making his knees tremble with something other than exhaustion, adds almost to himself, ‘I was too soft on your brother.’

All the air seems to be trapped in Sascha’s chest, as if he’s tried to breathe through glue. His father can’t mean – his mother wouldn’t let – but his mother’s in France, not due back for days and Sascha’s left standing on a cold, empty tennis court in the grey twilight, clay gritty in his damp socks and his thin shoulders tucked up around his ears with the anticipation of hurt. It’ll hurt, he knows that; all his father’s tennis training hurts in a grinding, unsympathetic way, that his mother’s comforted him is just the way his father was trained - that being hard means it’s working. His mother’s training is easier, kinder, the same patterns with all the sharp edges sanded down but it hadn’t been enough.

He needs to get better.

‘Okay,’ Sascha says, voice hanging thin in the cold air. It sounds too young, too uncertain, so he squares his shoulders and stares up at his father. ‘If it makes me better, okay.’

 

 

When Mischa gets back from Paris that year, he remarks on how unusually quiet Sascha is for once.

‘Dad training you so hard you forgot how to speak?’ he teases, sprawled across his bed in their shared room the first night back. He stretches across the gap between the beds, tumbled full of racquets and practice clothes, wayward tennis shoes, Mischa almost falling into the mess, to ruffle Sascha’s hair into a birds’ nest-wild tangle. It’s his favourite trick; when Sascha ducks away with a stifled protest, it’s unusual enough for Mischa to pause.

‘Hey, hey Sash,’ he says, voice going gentle. ‘You alright?’

‘I’m fine, I’m tired,’ Sascha mutters and turns slowly over in bed, pulling the blanket up to his chin, over the ancient red t-shirt he’s wearing. It used to be Mischa’s and it’s too big on him, though not as much as it used to be, fabric washed to threadbare softness. ‘Turn your light off, I have an early practice.’

‘Sash,’ Mischa repeats, half-teasing, half-confused because his little brother can sulk like a champion but he likes to make it known what’s annoyed him, to make the reaction more effective. This time, Mischa can’t think of a single thing he’s done to earn the silent treatment. ‘Sash, come on. Is it because you lost to that Italian? He was older than you, that’s all.’ When that doesn’t get a response he leans over again to poke his little brother’s shoulder, just visible above the sheet, intending to keep at it until he gets a response.

What he gets is Sascha making a high-pitched whine and scrambling away across the mattress so fast he almost tips right off, catching himself with fistfuls of blanket. The look he throws Mischa over his shoulder is furious and glacier-cold, the depthless blue of his eyes suddenly unfamiliar.

‘I’m _tired_ ,’ he snaps and turns away, breaking the eye contact so Mischa can remember to breathe again. ‘I’m not sad about losing, I’m _fine._ Or I would be if you’d let me sleep.’

Bewildered to find himself in a fight he doesn’t understand, Mischa considers reaching out to poke Sascha again. Considers demanding an explanation, dragging Sascha out from under the sheet he’s yanked over his head, trying to think of anything he might have done from an entirely different country to upset the little brother who’d wished him luck days ago, smiling and demanding souvenir tennis balls from Paris.

But, he knows better than anyone that pushing Sascha for something is the best way to get him to decide he won’t cooperate. Reaching out, this time Mischa flicks off the light and lies down, shifting to find a comfortable spot on the lumpy mattress that is the first thing to remind him in the mornings that he’s home and not in a hotel.

‘Whatever’s upset you, you know you can always talk to me Sash,’ he says quietly into the dark. He thinks he hears his little brother mutter a response but it’s muffled into pillow and blanket, fading into something incomprehensible and Mischa’s tired too, flights and losing and he lets his eyes close, telling himself he’ll get to the bottom of it in the morning.

In the morning after practice, Sascha’s back to loud boisterousness and with the glee of blitzing his practice, forehand smoothing out until even their father’s smiling at lunchtime, remarking that they need to go racquet shopping later. Mischa, distracted by unpacking and the routine of being home, their mother chiding him for the state of his tennis clothes balled up still-damp in a pocket of his racquet bag, wonders for a second if it’s worth restarting the mystery fight by asking what the matter was.

And then forgets.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sascha almost forgets not to let Novak too close, and Novak's playing a totally different game to the one he knows. Meanwhile, Mischa was always the smart one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, this took so long because I deleted over 2000 words and rewrote a bunch of this and it's still **too long** and **a whole lot of talking**. I'm never setting a scene with two characters stuck on a plane together ever again. 
> 
> Stuff will actually happen in the next chapter. Probably. Who knows when these two are involved.

**_now_ **

 

‘This is _your_ plane?’

‘A little bit my plane,’ Novak amends, smiling at Sascha’s wide-eyed awe all the same. He forgets sometimes what it was like, to be new-forged and hungry, watching Roger walk toward his private jets while Novak stewed resentfully in coach. ‘Maybe like a wing or something. I invest in the company so I always can fly when I need, not have to let security men feel me up pretending they do not know who I am.’

Sascha’s smile is the shifting half-smirk that, more often these days, he keeps hidden under a press-appropriate poker face. ‘I know you play the Boodles before. You should be used to hands that wander.’

‘You too?’ Novak asks and groans when Sascha nods ruefully. ‘It should be illegal for those women to have so much champagne. You, they must love you with the...’ He gestures vaguely to Sascha’s face, the insouciant air of attractiveness that would’ve been catnip to the hyper-rich Boodles crowd. ‘Did anyone offer you a bribe to sleep with them?’

‘One of them offer me her husband’s Ferrari,’ Sascha says without missing a beat, ‘but it was a very ugly green. I told her to repaint it before next year and maybe I consider it.’

Novak tries not to stare at him too incredulously. ‘... but you would not really?’

‘Maybe.’ Sascha’s obviously aiming for deadpan but the smirk is breaking through, pulling his mouth crooked and amused. ‘You would have to buy me a Ferrari to find out.’

‘I order one as soon as we land,’ Novak says, because he’s never been out-teased yet and Sascha joking is about a thousand percent improvement on the grey sadness from the airport. Novak’s wash of relief that they can laugh at each other, that Sascha’s _fine,_ is better than stepping off a Melbourne court in summer into an air-conditioned locker room. Even better is when he’s rewarded with Sascha’s blink, the automatic sucker question shaping on his mouth, _really,_ before he swallows it, grinning as he ducks his head and looks away.

Shame really. Novak was only half-joking.

They’re sitting in leather armchairs around a small table toward the back of the plane, tucked in the kind of private corner commercial airlines classed as an optional extra. Toronto’s fallen away behind them, clouds rolling out in endless mountain ranges of white beyond the windows and Gebhard’s already snoring again on the couch somewhere in front of them, Marian nodding off over his book in his own armchair nearby. Novak’s so used to the peaceful quiet, the butter-soft leather and space to stretch out tired muscles, that he forgets to appreciate it most of the time.

He should invite the new gen along more often, he decides, looking around with fresh eyes. Walking up the steps, Sascha looked like he’s forgotten to be sad because he was so busy being impressed — ‘Is not the first time you fly private though, I know this-’ ‘No, sometimes I have, with sponsors but my dad would- he thinks it’s a waste of money,’ — and it’s oddly gratifying to be reminded that, despite the last two years, Novak’s still doing pretty well at life.

Well enough to wonder what else he can to do help because even joking, smiling, Sascha’s still hunched forward so far in his seat that his glasses keep sliding down his nose, the tension writ in every muscle obvious because he has such stupidly large shoulders and can’t make himself small enough to hide it. He didn’t even lean back against the g-force when they took off. Novak wonders if there’s any way he can politely get the German to stretch into a different position, assess what the injury might be since Sascha seems loathe to offer an explanation.

He has to stamp down firmly on the first idea to present itself. Jokes aside, he is _not_ using the pretence of offering a lift to escalate flirting with Sascha into something more. He flirts with everyone (especially Roger, because nothing else winds the Swiss up quite so well), despite Jelena pointing out more than once that it’s just a nervous reflex, ingrained now, to make people like him.

But he’s not going to make Sascha uncomfortable when Novak offered him an innocent lift, didn’t give him the option of saying no, only to get his hands on the German to assess if he’s injured. That’d just be...rude.

‘You know there is even a bedroom at the back,’ he says before he can run the small talk through his brain-to-mouth filter and curses silently, Sascha’s gaze snapping to him wide-eyed. ‘I mean, for jet lag! It make it easier. Also other good things – I _mean_ , good things in having the plane. Pierre and the others also, they are much happier not being stuck in the carriers always.’

‘Lövik is used to it but he still sulk,’ Sascha agrees, kindly accepting the tangent and not teasing Novak for blushing at the innuendo. ‘I feel bad sometime, making him travel, but...’ His mobile mouth goes flat, the shadows clouding up behind his expression again. ‘I miss him when I leave him behind.’

‘He miss you too,’ Novak points out, and Sascha’s tension cracks back to a something that could, if Novak was being generous, be called a smile.

‘I would hope so.’

‘Anyway is an easy fix.’ Novak makes his tone brisk and non-negotiable. ‘You fly from Monte Carlo, I also do, bring him on here whenever we fly same time yes? You and Lövik and all the clan of Zverevs, if you can put up with your hair being pulled by a toddler or chewed by poodles sometimes.’

Sascha sits up straight for the first time, staring at Novak. Behind the thick-rimmed glasses Novak suspects he chose to make himself less noticable, his eyes are the sun-washed blue of the sky at forty thousand feet, of the clear air beyond the windows; they stand out bright against the paleness of the rest of his face. He looks like a kid left alone with the Christmas presents, temptation in the soft intake of breath but also wary, too responsible these days not anticipate consequences if he takes the shiny dangled carrot.

‘That is very nice of you but I could not possibly-’

‘Is no trouble, Sascha. You are never any trouble,’ Novak interrupts, letting his voice warm affectionately. That might be too much, Sascha looking even more thrown off-balance so Novak shakes his head, forcing a grin to shift the mood. ‘Of course, the Toronto press may not agree with me on that.’

He means it as a tease, something to reset the balance back to the easy banter; he’d watched the fallout from Sascha’s press conference yesterday with a feeling somewhere between awe and the urge to groan, the journalists buzzing around the media rooms like a smug nest of hornets as they called in their headlines, the word _pathetic_ bouncing around the complex. Even Nick didn’t generate that level of seething reaction – although with Nick, nothing short of outright murder was headline-worthy these days.

It’s always news in the locker room when anyone loses their cool in press. Marian had caught Novak rewatching the Youtube clip for the third time, Sascha’s weary petulance paused on the screen – given him a raised eyebrow and warned, ‘Do not get any ideas.’

Looks like Sascha got a lecture too because he scrunches down a little in his seat, pulling the sheepish expression that Novak would suspect he practices in the mirror for maximum dimples if he hadn’t seen Sascha blush awkwardly every time someone told him he was beautiful.

‘I didn’t say anything I didn’t mean, but I didn’t mean it like that,’ he mutters. ‘They all overreacted.’

‘The press do not care what you mean, they only care what will make good-’

‘Good headlines, I know, I went to that ATP seminar.’ Sascha groans, dropping his face, glasses and all, into his folded arms on the table. ‘Why is it so hard to be honest?’ he says, muffled by his own arms. ‘You tell them one tiny true thing, they turn it into a lie; imagine what they do if I tell them more true things. Anyone think they write novels, not newspapers.’

Novak allows himself to reach out to pat the bowed golden head in sympathy. The fluff of Sascha’s hair is windtousled and silky, warm with body heat and catching on the roughened pads of his fingertips.

‘It is okay. You get older, you manage it better.’

‘Really,’ Sascha mumbles without lifting his head. ‘Tell me how not playing the grass season worked for you.’

‘I say you manage it better, not that you never fuck up,’ Novak says ruefully. He’s grateful that he actually won Wimbledon in the end, making the ribbing about his outburst about grass after the French good-natured; if he’d lost first round it would’ve been a bitter _I told you so._

‘Do not worry though,’ he adds, ‘good thing about tennis is, every week is a shiny new chance to fuck up! By US Open everyone have forgotten so only try not to punch a journalist in Ohio — and perhaps hope that Nick actually do punch one at last — and everyone forget all about you being news story of the day.’

‘Don’t joke about that. I already have to lie about hanging out with Nick because my dad thinks he’s a bad influence. No way would I be allowed to visit him in jail.’ With a sigh Sascha straightens up by inches, glasses askew; he’s moving stiff with clenched teeth – and this time he catches the concern Novak’s not fast enough to hide. Colour flushes his cheeks and his eyes flick sideways, as if looking for an escape route before realising forty thousand feet is a long way to fall.

He looks like he’s sincerely considering taking emergency flying lessons anyway when Novak tentatively clears his throat.

‘So,’ Novak says with studied nonchalance, the tone that he’s learned fools journalists and immediately makes Jelena put down whatever contract or charity proposal she’s proofing to glare at him in deep suspicion. It makes Sascha wince, rubbing a hand over his eyes as if he can hide behind it. ‘Is your dad angry about the interview? Is that why?’

Bewilderingly over what Novak thought was a rather innocuous question, all the colour drains from Sascha’s face.

‘W-what?’

Novak frowns. ‘Why you fight? I mean, that is the impression I’ve been having, sorry if not. It is okay though,’ he adds hastily because Sascha’s still staring at him as if he’s waiting for Novak to ram the knife home – which is slightly devastating if Novak thinks about it too hard because he thought Sascha knew him better than that. ‘Sascha, we all fight. Once Boris tell me that if I keep running to Marian like a child hiding behind his mother’s skirts then I would never win another Slam and I was so mad that I take the plane and leave him in Shanghai and I do not apologise for a month.’ He winces; keeping Boris from running to the press with that little spat had been expensive. ‘It is harder when you let them down even though you try, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ Sascha says after pausing long enough for Novak to worry that he’d over-babbled. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

He still sounds shaky, as if he isn’t sure that he knows that at all. Aware of his team right there behind them, not sure if Marian’s safely asleep yet, Novak lowers his voice.

‘You sure about that, Sascha?’

‘I’m f-’ Sascha cuts himself off with a swallow, looking out the window at the rolling cloudscape. Almost immediately he pulls his glasses off with an irritated mutter, starting to clean the smudges off against his t-shirt.

Without looking up he says, voice tentative, ‘It is hard when it is your dad.’

‘When you fight, or as a coach?’

‘ _Both_ ,’ Sascha says, teeth closing with a click just too late to catch the word back. As he slides the glasses back on his gaze skitters from the view outside the window across Novak, to Marian who’s breathing a loud and regular sleep pattern in his chair now, chin resting his chest.

Sascha’s frown furrows, some decision being made behind his tired eyes and he nods towards Novak’s sleeping coach.

‘How do you decide what you are doing, with him?’ he asks. It comes out even slower than his usual laconic drawl, as if he’s shaping every word with close attention. He still isn’t looking at Novak directly. ‘If you disagree on something – on how you train, why you lost – does he listen?’

‘Mostly it is me with the not listening.’ Novak’s joking, but he sobers when Sascha’s smile is a halfhearted effort, there and gone again as if he can’t hold it steady. Shit. Clearly this is supposed to be a Teaching Moment and he needs to come up with something helpful, not misdirect with a laugh so no one looks too close.

He takes a second to wonder if Roger feels this much panic when younger players expect him to have all the answers. Probably not, the GOAT bastard.

‘It depends on what we argue about,’ he says, also slow to buy himself time. ‘Anything that affect tennis, Marian knows better than me by now what work after we are practically married so long. When I try his way instead of my way – and I do try my way often, believe me – we have history to tell me that his way is likely to be the best option.’ He half-hitches a shoulder. ‘I get easily distracted by- well, everything, and Marian, I trust him when he say Novak, stop doing the crazy thing.’

Although he’s giving every appearance of distraction, Sascha’s gaze flicks up through his eyelashes in a way that makes Novak think he’s listening intently. ‘And do you stop?’

Novak grins. ‘Sometime I do pretend I think otherwise than him. Only to keep his head from growing too big to fit the hotel room you know,’ he adds, loud enough for Marian to hear if he’s awake, and to try to lighten the atmosphere because Sascha’s still frowning so hard he might get permanent wrinkles and that would be a tragedy. ‘But I trust Marian to know when something is wrong, and he trust me to say if I feel something not work. It took a long time, is a learning process you know? But you have to believe your coach know what he is talking about at least most of the time or there is no point. Everything fall apart.’

‘And then you fire them.’

‘And then you- wait, say again?’ It’s Novak’s turn to frown at Sascha, pretty sure that had too much weight to be just a throwaway dig at his past coaching decisions, but he can’t mean- ‘...Are you wanting to fire your dad?’

‘No of course not. He’s coached me and Mischa our whole lives and look at where we are,’ Sascha says in an automatic patter.

Too automatic, the words rolling out with the choreographed smoothness of the bullshit they all feed reporters on the regular. Hearing it from each other is shorthand for _leave it alone_ , and usually other players take the hint, knowing how the game works. The person bullshitting an awkward interview tomorrow could be anyone, including you, and truth was a weapon that your next opponent could use to snatch your serve from under you.

In any locker room, in any shared interview, Novak would know Sascha’s warned him off and take his cue to change the subject.

This time Sascha’s on Novak’s private jet, looking exhausted and sad and more than a little like he’s drowning beneath pretending that he doesn’t need a lifebelt. This time, Novak lets himself snort in derision.

‘I am looking and it look to me like you cannot bring yourself to admit that you want to fire your dad.’

Irritation writes itself in the sharp twist of Sascha’s mouth, the sweet little pout he makes when he’s holding back something rude. Bingo. Novak’s hit a nerve and, sensing the advantage, he presses:

‘Am I wrong? Tell me if I am, is not like you to think before you say what you want. Is not that you have won so much this year that is cannot have crossed your mind, right?’

Sascha sits upright with a jerk as if he’s been hit. ‘So what, you think because you fire your coach when it get hard, it is what we all do?’ he snaps. A flush of colour bloom on his pale cheeks, his glare only slightly undermined by his glasses sliding down his nose. ‘You want me to say I don’t think my dad hi- is helping me anymore and all my problems are this, not because I cannot hit a fucking forehand on an off day?’

Novak meets his glare without flinching, and raises one, deliberately aggravating eyebrow. ‘You tell me.’

Sascha flops back in his chair with a huff that becomes a gulp of air when his shoulders hit the leather; he immediately flinches forward again, breathing gone ragged for a second. Only years of practice maintaining his pokerface lets Novak keep his concern from showing.

If the reason Sascha’s angry is that his dad told him not to play Cincinnati, Novak thinks even GOAT-level advice would be to lock Sascha in his hotel room until his injury heals and hope he’s cooled off enough not to throw a punch when he’s finally let out.

‘Maybe that is it,’ Sascha says after the long few seconds it takes him to regulate his breathing. He doesn’t bother to regulate his bitter tone, practically scraped out through clenched teeth. ‘Maybe I am too afraid to fire him and too tired of lying to every fucking journo who does not know when to _back the fuck off_ when I say my coaching is fine, all my problems are mine. Is that what you think?’

‘I think that is something closer to a truth,’ Novak says, carefully neutral because Sascha’s suddenly wound tight as a bowstring, angry over some argument Novak’s blundered across, and locking-in-hotel-rooms-for-his-own-good plans aside Novak would rather not get punched for being a patronising dick. Still – occasionally he _is_ a patronising dick so he allows himself to reach out and pat Sascha’s hand where it’s gripping the table edge. ‘Do you feel better for letting that out?’

Sascha yanks his hand away. ‘ _No_ ,’ he mutters, turning to glare out the window again. After the silence draws on too long he adds, grudgingly, ‘Maybe. But you know, you are still an asshole.’

‘It is one of my many charming qualities,’ Novak agrees cheerfully. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’

Unexpectedly, Sascha’s mouth quirks around a smile. ‘About you being an asshole?’

Despite his relief – looks like he isn’t getting punched after all – to preserve his dignity, Novak has to firmly order himself not to laugh. ‘About your _dad_ , you ungrateful junior.’

‘Hey!’ Sascha protests but without any effort behind it. As he pushes his glasses back up before they tip off his nose, his gaze slides sideways, almost helpless, back to the sleeping Marian.

Novak’s known him since he was five years old and speaks a double handful of languages but he can’t translate the strange combination of bitterness and longing that crosses Sascha’s face.

‘I don’t know if there is anything to discuss,’ he says, finally. His defeated tone is an admission in itself. ‘You say it right, that they know best? Wanting to change is only the loss talking. I need to do what I am told and I’ll get there, that is all.’

A cold shiver runs down Novak’s back. He knows why that sounds off to him but he doesn’t know how to _say_ it without telling Sascha more than — no, not more than he’s comfortable with, because Sascha’s grown up with the secrets of the tour wrapped around him like worn-in clothes and he’s proven countless times that he can keep them safe. But Novak tries very hard to pretend the chinks in his armour don’t exist and he’s not in the habit of handing rivals a roadmap of his weaknesses.

But... Sascha’s likely to be on tour long after Novak’s left it. He can probably stand to trade a few weaknesses to make sure bad coaching choices don’t end that early.

‘That is _not_ all it should be,’ he says, careful to steer his unease toward kindness rather than a reprimand. ‘Sascha, you know coaching, it should be a dialogue? Not a dictatorship. I listen to Marian most of the time because I have tried the other ways and I know that they do not work, that I can trust Marian to be the one to catch me without making me feel stupid for falling in the first place, but many others I also talk to before we find the balance and if I disagree then he listen. I never only let him tell me always my opinion is wrong.’

He hesitates but he’s neck-deep in it now, Sascha watching him sideways with an avid, almost hungry edge to his expression so Novak adds, quiet, ‘Trust me, I try to trust the person who tell me how I am always wrong and when you fall in front of them, they do not catch you.’

It’s more than he’s admitted to anyone on tour over the last year, apart from the few quiet words to Andy when asked a direct question, and Juan Martin who leaned on Novak as much as Novak leaned on him, those handful of late night phone calls that Novak will never mention to a journalist and knows that Delpo won’t either – but there’s something in the hollow defeat in Sascha’s eyes that makes him want to be honest.

That makes him wonder what could possibly have Sascha, to all appearances with the world at his fingertips and a glittering career only one almost-assured Slam win away, sound so resigned.

Sascha doesn’t volunteer any clues. Instead he chews on his lower lip, hard enough that Novak has to close his fingers around the impulse to reach out and soothe the bruise, wishing desperately that he had the licence to do it, to reassure with a touch – but he doesn’t, he reminds himself, and he’s trying to be the respectable mentor to the younger generation for once in his life here, so he manages to keep his hands laced together on the table. Just.

Whatever Sascha’s mulling over, he seems to come to a decision. He looks directly at Novak for the first time since he called him an asshole.

‘Are you talking about Boris?’

Novak’s heart trips over its next beat, knows his flinch is as good as a confirmation. ‘What?!’

‘The one who told you that you are wrong always.’ Now Sascha’s looking at him again, it’s the focused intent of staring his opponent down across the net; Novak knows every flicker of dismay may as well be broadcast in neon letters across his forehead. Talking about Boris makes his stomach roil as if he’d eaten an entire pizza, his sense of balance gone weightless as if he needs to hang to something even though he’s sitting down.

‘What makes you say that?’

Sascha shrugs. ‘I know I was not around so much for all of it but I hear the way the others talk now, and there are not so many reasons it could be for how you play in 2016. Was he a bad coach?’

‘No,’ Novak says immediately, because it wouldn’t be fair to fall back on that as an excuse. Swallowing against the other excuses that want to follow it, it’s his turn to glance away, to stare down at the fake wood grain of the table until he collects his scattered thoughts into something that can come out sounding like an explanation rather than a complaint.

‘He was a very good coach for the tennis,’ he says in the end. ‘You see yourself how good, so many titles won. It was everything else that was all wrong. There is… only so many times you can hear that you deserve to lose before you start to lose because you believe it is true, you know?’

That last comes out so quiet, it’s almost buried in the aftermath of hurt that still tangles around his heartbeat in his chest every time he thinks back to the years of Boris’ coaching, the slow sense of constantly expecting the ground to be yanked out from under his feet. He’s surprised, distantly, that he’s allowed himself to be drawn into honesty with it; only Marian knows more than the broad outlines and the memory of that explanation is half-blurred by rum and misery. Even to himself, Novak struggles to pinpoint specifics; Boris wasn’t a bad coach, or even bad to be around most of the time.

It was just that, at the end of every day of practice and matches, Novak inevitably found himself leaning against the shower wall with the weight of failure pressing him down until even winning felt like a loss.

‘Coaching is not only about forehands,’ he says quietly. ‘If you are unhappy, all the practice and luck in the world will not lift the ball over the net.’

‘That I do know,’ Sascha says. His smile at Novak is barely there, a tiny awkward twist, making him look older with exhaustion – as old as Novak feels, some days. ‘I was hoping that would get better with age also.’

Novak sighs. ‘No, that one pretty much sucks your whole career, sorry.’

‘Eh, I suspect as much.’ Sascha shifts restlessly in his seat although they’re obscenely comfortable – Novak’s back has even forgiven him for cramping it into airport chairs earlier – and he picks at the paper coasters on the table, pleating one edge. There’s a distracted, expectant weight to the silence as if he’s working up to something so Novak waits, watches Sascha’s callused fingertips intent on the neat creases of paper. There’s a fresh bruise striped across the back of one hand, the bloom of red-black straight-edged. Maybe he’d caught his hand in a door.

Novak’s taken aback by his own sudden flush of concern, that Sascha’s apparently mysteriously injured and also in danger from everyday objects. Fuck, the kid needs a fleet of coaches just to keep an eye on him.

He’s so distracted staring at Sascha’s hands that it takes an awkward second to process when Sascha says, ‘I thought about hiring Boris. After Juan Carlos.’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Novak says reflexively when that sinks in properly, ‘ _Don’t_. Tell me you are not still thinking about it.’

Sascha’s fingers don’t pause, pleating another neat fold into the paper. He doesn’t look up. ‘I was thinking about it. He work for you.’

‘Right up until he didn’t,’ Novak points out, and makes himself take a deep breath to force his voice level rather than a shout. ‘Sascha, as someone who has Been There, Argued With That, please don’t. Please. I do not think the nerves of the tournament staff around the world could take it if you ran up against the brick wall that is Boris.’

Sascha does look up at that, the flash of blue shaded with amusement before he looks back down, but not before Novak catches the smirk.

‘Are you trying to say I’m stubborn?’

‘I suspect that is a trick question, so no comment.’ That gets Novak another half-smirk, light enough now that some of the tension leeches out of the air with it. Sinking back into his chair, Novak contemplates Sascha and Boris and all the terrible ways that could play out, the fact that Sascha’s still working out the mechanics of not imploding in on himself when matches start to slip away and hearing the exact cutting edge there’d be in Boris’ voice beneath the veneer of kindess after.

Maybe it would work for Sascha where it didn’t for Novak; maybe cruel to be kind was exactly what he needs to spur him out of the self-defeating funk.

But Novak remembers clearly how Sascha looked at Wimbledon – wiped pale and shaking with the stomach virus that left him hunched over in a corner on the locker room bench, other players murmuring sympathetic things and making sure to stay a biohazard-respecting distance at all times because everyone was afraid to catch it too. His father had been the only one to touch him, just a hand on his shoulder and Sascha had picked up his racquet from between his feet – Novak could see his hand shaking from across the room – and stood, wavering, to follow his father out.

Novak had thought they were going to the referee’s office to retire; it was only that evening, scrolling results on his phone, that he realised Sascha walked out on court and won. Only realised much later, back in Monte Carlo with his brand new Wimbledon trophy sparkling in his trophy cabinet, when he stumbled over Sascha pale and slumped on a bench at the waterfront because he was still going dizzy when he tried to run, how incredibly worthless that win had been.

Sascha doesn’t need someone to tell him he’s useless for not trying hard enough. He needs someone to tell him he’s not a failure if he slows down once in a while.

‘If you are thinking of another coach,’ he ventures, ‘did you not like Lendl when you work together that time? I could ask Andy to put a word in if you need him to commit to the travel-’

There’s the sharp sound of the paper coaster tearing beneath Sascha’s fingertips.

‘No, thank you. I- Ivan was fine, but my dad thought it may not work.’

Novak lets a thread of exasperation creep into his tone. ‘Your dad? He is not the one trying to win Slams. It is your life Sascha, your choices to try. I stick with Marian because he is the one for me but you should try other things. Look at Roger with his many, many coaching changes like the picky princess that he is, and his inability to commit until Seve make an honest man of him. Change is not failure. Did _you_ like Ivan?’

Sascha flushes, scrunching all six-foot plus of himself down into the chair cushions and picking at the wisps of shredded coaster.

‘I- yes,’ he mutters. When Novak lets the silence expand expectantly, he stumbles on: ‘I like that he was to the point, that he do not overreact, not like Juan Carlos. I like his sense of humour.’ He waves hand, a helpless flick of wrist dismissing the conversation. ‘But you waste your breath talking to Andy because he would not stay. We discuss- but he think, not so much with the travel I guess. Anyway it is not as if my dad would go _away,_ even there is army of new coaches.’

‘It would not be a failure if you need him to, Sascha,’ Novak says. ‘It would be worse to keep something bad, that does not work, out of loyalty because in the end anything that was good in it will all be ruined anyway. It is good to know when enough is enough and you are in need of something new. You are the one playing the tennis. That is what matters.’

 _Huh_ , he reflects, surprised by himself, looks like he had at least some of the answers for the younger generation after all. Shame he’ll never be able to rub it in Roger’s face without betraying all Sascha’s problems at the same time.

Looking at Sascha, at the unhappy inward curve of his shoulders and thin frown as he stares at Novak, even to prove a point to Roger he doesn’t think he’d want to.

‘Did you ever do that? Keep doing something too long that did not work?’

Sascha’s voice goes tentative over the question, lower lip catching between his teeth; giving in to the impulse finally, Novak reaches out, slow enough to give Sascha time to pull back. Instead he goes still, eyes widening, as Novak carefully frees his lip from his teeth with the pad of his thumb, sweeps a soothing touch over the reddened mark before he lets his hand drop.

‘I stuck with Boris for three years,’ he says very quietly. ‘I should have realised much earlier that the winning was not worth it.’

Sascha starts to bite his lip again before he catches himself, and licks the spot Novak touched instead. The pink tip of his tongue leaves a tempting wet trail across the curve of his mouth and Novak has to breathe in sharply against the pull of heat in his gut.

 _Not the time_ , he reminds himself; just because Sascha didn’t flinch away, and just because tour gossip pretty firmly agrees that Marcelo and Sascha are only friends these days, it doesn’t mean anything.

‘Thanks,’ Sascha says after a minute, ‘for being honest.’

Novak’s obviously not quite achieved model mentor standards yet because his first urge is to reply, _care to return the favour,_ but he recognises it for the dickish thought it is and the impulse passes as fast as it formed. He’s not entitled to an explanation and honestly, he’ll accept not having to watch Sascha hiring Boris as payment for a thousand free flights in future.

‘Any time,’ he says instead and leans back to make a point that Sascha doesn’t have to reciprocate, catching the stewardess’ eye. ‘Hey, you want anything to drink?’

Sascha blinks. ‘I- what? No, I-’ He hesitates, lips half-parted on something and Novak could kick himself because in attempting to make Sascha feel like he didn’t have to confess all his problems, maybe Novak just distracted him from _actually confessing all his problems_. ‘Actually, I could do with the bathroom.’

‘At the back,’ Novak says waving a desultory hand and when Sascha’s given him an awkward smile and all but fled to the back of the plane, only the stewardess waiting patiently stops him banging his forehead against the table. _Idiot_.

He asks for chamomile tea which is a thousand percent less alcoholic than he feels the situation warrants, but Marian would probably smell a martini in his sleep and confiscate it because he’s still under the delusion that Novak has a shot at winning Cincinnati. While he waits, he stares at Sascha’s vacant chair and tries not to worry that he’s totally fucked this up.

Half the time they forget that Sascha’s still young enough to need to ask the same questions they all asked at twenty-one. He’s been background scenery on tour for so long, knows how to navigate the ebb and flow of the locker room, pranking Marcelo and making easy jokes in the player’s lounge while other young players watch quietly from the edges; everyone assumes he already has all the answers off court and he’s fast picking up the on court ones too. The Ferrero situation caused a ripple of gossip for a few days before being forgotten, written off as a learning curve – with a consensus of, if Novak remembers right, that Sascha must’ve had good reason for the blazing row that ended in his (now-ex) coach storming out, the locker room door slamming so hard behind him that the handle came loose.

The whole kerfuffle was dismissed by players with a shrug and an amused echo around the locker room, ‘don’t piss off Sascha, the Zverev train will run you down.’

No one caught Sascha afterward to ask if he was okay, to check over the fault lines and scars like they might with any other young player. Sascha shrugged off queries with a tight smile and handled the entire thing so calmly under a barrage of press questions, Novak remembers being impressed – remembers thinking that _he_ couldn’t have handled a bad coaching situation so well at twenty-one.

So why did they all assume Sascha could?

Being on tour for a thousand years wasn’t the same as being mature enough to deal with coaching and officials and crushing defeats. Novak knows the whole tour all but adopted Sascha at the age of five, and he posts funny dog videos in the top ten players’ Whatsapp group and practices with them without any visible signs of awe these days but he also walked into that airport lounge earlier looking like there was a ten tonne weight on his shoulders.

Novak, running over everything he thought he’d known about the German, starts to wonder if, because Sascha’s been familiar background scenery for so long, the rest of them have missed that he’s floundering because they didn’t bother to look close enough.

And now he’s made Sascha think that he can’t talk to Novak about what’s wrong. Fuck.

He’s distracted by the stewardess delivering the silver pot of tea, spoon clinking against the china cup when she sets it out. He drinks it resentfully, staring out the window and resenting the peaceful wisps of cloud and resenting his ability to somehow always say the wrong thing even when he’s trying to be responsible and only when he resentfully tips the teacup up so far that he hits himself in the nose with the rim does he realise that it’s empty, that he’s been sitting there stewing resentfully for almost half an hour and there’s no sign of Sascha.

‘ _Shit_ ,’ he says out loud. Too loud because Marian opens one eye and asks, with sleepy patience,

‘What’s the matter Nole?’

‘Nothing,’ Novak says, getting up. ‘I think Sascha might have jumped out of the plane is all, it’s fine, I can handle it. Go back to sleep.’

Marian opens both eyes, all the better to give him a skeptical look. ‘If you jump out after him, please be knowing that I will not be tying myself to a parachute and jumping after you so as your coach I advise learning how to bounce. Also, I will not be asking them to turn the plane around so enjoy hitchhiking to Ohio.’

‘Your support will be noted for your annual employment review,’ Novak says dryly. ‘Excuse me, I have to go make sure I have not misplaced the top ten tennis player I am responsible for at the moment. I do not think the ATP will be happy with me if I explain I let him wander off into the clouds at forty thousand feet.’

‘It is okay, I give you alibi.’ Marian yawns, and wriggles more comfortably down into his chair, chin drooping back to his chest. Closing his eyes, he says, ‘If you find him waiting for you in the bed with no clothes on, keep the noise down. I need to look his mother in the eye next time she ask after my family.’

Novak splutters. ‘That is not- I mean, I do not want- Sascha is a friend I am concerned for, that is all!’

‘Is that what wanting in someone’s pants is called these days,’ Marian murmurs, and flaps a hand at him when Novak makes an incoherent _kill me now so I can escape this conversation_ sound. ‘Is fine Nole, you both need to be happier for Cincinnati. No taking things too seriously, please – remember he already break Melo’s heart and I am not for picking up those pieces before the US Open. But you have my permission to enjoy yourselves. Quietly.’

‘If I can never bring myself to have sex again, it will be your fault,’ Novak tells him bitterly. The stewardess is looking at him curiously from the staff area at the front of the plane, probably wondering why he’s blushing the colour of an overripe tomato and Novak spins on his heel with a groan, starting toward the bathroom. Now even if Sascha _is_ waiting for him naked on the bed, he’s not going to be able to do anything without feeling like it’s because his coach told him to.

Of course, if Sascha is waiting for him naked on the bed then Novak’s sure he’ll get past the hang up. It’s just a shame to make something that beautiful so _awkward._

Perhaps for the best in avoiding overcomplicating his life, when he walks past the door to the bedroom it’s open, quiet, bed smooth-made and empty. The bathroom door next to it is still shut tight and Novak plasters his brightest smile in place to make it less awkward – maybe Sascha’s just travel-sick, or maybe he’s just sick of Novak telling him how to run his coaching team like an interfering busybody – before he knocks.

‘You alright, Sascha?’ he says, layered over with false cheerfulness.

He’s about to add a joke to diffuse the weirdness – _I am not checking up on you, is only if I lose the top next gen player in mid air then the ATP will have questions about my match winning tactics –_ but before he can inhale on the first syllable, the door swings out from under his knuckles.

‘Checking to make sure I am not stealing anything?’Sascha asks, slouching laconically against the doorframe. His tone is solemn but the tease is in the corners of his mouth, twitching up. Bracing his hand on the wall against a rattle of turbulence, Novak grins at him.

‘You catch me, I am worried for my security deposit and you are so charming, I tell anyone that you steal stuff then they say oh not Sascha, he’s such a good boy and then I have to walk to New York as you fly away in my plane.’ He pauses. ‘So, what were you doing?’

‘Going through the cupboards looking for stuff to steal,’ Sascha says, straight-faced and Novak laughs.

‘Of course,’ he agrees, playing along. ‘Find anything good?’

A surprising blush floods Sascha’s face, pink against gold, and he ducks his head from Novak’s grin. He _had_ looked.

‘Toothpaste, toothbrushes. Um. A lot of condoms?’

‘I know, so many right?’ Novak leans in like he’s confiding a secret, half-testing; he’s rewarded with Sascha’s automatic mirroring, head tipped down to Novak’s whisper. ‘Every jet I take ever, they fill bathroom with condoms. I have to use the bed if I am to skip the jet lag so I try not to think so much on it but I suspect they assume everyone only hire jets to join the mile high club you know?’

‘So... have you?’

Sascha also whispers it, somehow still managing to phrase the question in an entirely reasonable tone. His smile dimples when Novak makes a strangled hiss of protest. ‘Is that a yes?’

Novak groans. ‘It is _no comment.’_

He looks up – and up more, because he always forgets how small he is next to Sascha. They’re so close now that he can count the scatter of golden freckles over Sascha’s nose; when Sascha dips his head, a wayward curl of blond brushes Novak’s forehead. His t-shirt is askew as if he’d been tugging at it, Novak notices with an almost frantic effort to distract his base instincts from pressing forward into the question being asked by the cant of Sascha’s body.

This isn’t Novak taking advantage, not when Sascha’s smirking and swaying into easy touching distance, looking like he’s enjoying Novak’s struggle with temptation. He still looks tired, his languid slouch against the doorframe probably mostly to hold himself up, but it also shows off the lean curve of his hip, bare and tempting beneath the slid-down waistband of his shorts. Novak doesn’t realise he’s staring until Sascha huffs a laugh.

‘If you are having to think this long of an excuse,’ he says, amusement swirled lazily through it, ‘then the answer is yes.’

 _More like, I am trying to think of a way to offer,_ Novak almost says. Doesn’t, because he’s still not sure Sascha’s on board with anything more than the casual flirting he offers up to everyone – sometimes, he’s not sure Sascha _realises_ he’s flirting, which is going to be a problem one day soon when he stops flinching like he’s been burned every time a fan touches him, starts smiling instead and they take it as an invitation.

At twenty-one Novak couldn’t have notched up even half the offers he’s heard Sascha get (heard him turn down; it’s the almost always the same thing with Sascha) this year. And Novak had been _trying._

Maybe not an offer then – but there’s no harm in testing the waters.

‘You really think so?’ he says, drawling it out into a suggestion. He tilts his head back when Sascha’s lips part uncertainly, the brush of warmth from his breath drifting over Novak’s own mouth, they’re so close. ‘I think, Sascha, that you are asking the wrong question.’

Sascha’s eyes this close are more grey than blue behind his glasses, the shifting shades of a cloudy sky pushed thin by the dark of his pupils. ‘

’Oh,’ he says, softened to uncertainty, ‘and what should I be asking?’

Novak’s grin is all teeth. ‘You should be asking who I join it with.’

Sascha bites his lip and Novak watches the decision play out across his face, firming into a defiant tilt of his head. ‘Who-’

The only warning they get is the shiver of the plane beneath their feet, a rattle of the fittings, but it’s enough for Novak to tense, thousands of hours of flying ingrained into muscle memory and the buck of the turbulence barely rocks his balance. Sascha, distracted, staggers and Novak catches his shoulder before they bump foreheads, bracing him as they ride the rough pocket out.

The instant the plane steadies around them, Sascha steps back – almost yanks – until Novak drops his hand.

‘Maybe we should sit down,’ he says. All the teasing’s vanished from his voice, the grey of his eyes suddenly a brewing thunderstorm over the unhappy downturn of his mouth, the mouth that a second ago had been one slow breath away from Novak’s. It’s as if Novak touching him was a reprimand, reminded him of his place – whatever he thinks that is – and Novak flexes his fingers around the phantom sense of body heat and cotton itching over his palm.

He wants to ask what’s wrong – what _he_ did wrong – so he can rebuild the moment, close and safe held between them.

Sascha’s watching him, wide-eyed and wary at a careful distance, and Novak can’t quite find the words.

The PA system crackles to life before he manages to say anything. It’s the pilot, apologising for the turbulence and asking that everyone sit down for the next fifteen or so minutes until they find clearer skies, the implicit order behind the request backed up by another shiver of the deck beneath them. Novak looks at the unhappy hunch of Sascha’s shoulders walled around himself again, the pale, stubborn set to his expression – and sighs inwardly, conceding this a fight lost. Probably for the best anyway; it wouldn’t do for Marian to think he knows everything.

Besides, Novak knows how to let a single loss go. There’s always the next tournament, the next match, and Novak’s getting the hang of this comeback thing now. They’re both going to be on tour for years yet; he can wait.

‘Hey,’ he says, and smiles when Sascha looks up, wary of the implied question. ‘I have cards, and we have to sit down. Want to play poker?’

 

 

 

**_then_ **

 

After that first time, it mostly gets easier.

By the fourth time (earned by double-faulting every other serve in the first round of a minor ITF junior tournament, his father catching him aside after breakfast the next day and steering him back to his hotel room before check out, hand heavy and inescapable between Sascha’s shoulder blades) – by then it’s almost routine. By then Sascha’s fourteen, breathes through it, finally manages not to cry. By then he thinks he’s getting there, getting _better_ when he doesn’t miss a single first serve against Mischa the next time they practice and he dares to hope he’s almost good enough, that soon he’ll start winning enough to make his father happy.

His brother on the other hand, is… a problem.

Mischa’s remarked more than once on Sascha falling into uncharacteristic quiet over the last year, the ease that’s always been between them gone stiff. Lately he’s always pushing to know what the matter is when Sascha gets frustrated over a bad practice, started asking the kind of questions about how hard Sascha’s training that make their father’s tone take on a clipped curtness when he says that he knows what he’s doing, that only when Mischa’s played tennis as long as he has will he be able to criticise their coaching methods.

Sascha knows – reinforced by warning looks from their father during arguments around the dinner table – that he’s going to have to deal with the situation somehow. It should be simple; he knows all he has to do is snap back to the uncomplicated brightness of how he used to be, and do it soon, before Mischa goes past awkward questions right into being suspicious about why Sascha doesn’t sleep shirtless any more (the bruises fade but he’s not stupid; only sleeping in a shirt when he’s bruised is as good as shouting it to everybody).

Every morning he tries to remember how to shape a smile over breakfast, to ramble cheerfully about his schoolwork and the latest tour results in a stream-of-consciousness flood that used to roll out his mouth without effort, noise for the sheer joy of being thirteen and believing he knew everything.

It was less than a year ago; he’s still the same person. It should be the easiest thing in the world.

It’s not. He’s exhausted by the ache of his back, by the effort of not flinching when he forgets not lean back against the spindly hardness of his chair at dinner. Forcing his tone into the bare minimum of politeness instead of snapping a sarcastic response whenever he’s asked a question makes every word into a marathon. His mouth falls unhappily down at the corners whenever he stops consciously holding it steady and, inevitably, by lunchtime he’s slid back into silence.

He’s spent his whole life being the loudest to make up for being the smallest, demanding attention and friends and learning what charm feels like, shaped into a shy smile for the journalists who coo over Mischa’s little tennis player brother. It’s always been unconscious, easy; he’s never had to watch what he said to make sure it’s agreeable enough, to catch remarks before they slip off his tongue in case they’re too bitter. Never had to actively shape himself into something other than what he _is,_ because that’s always been everything he ever needed.

Now he keeps tripping up. Keeps forgetting not to flinch away when Mischa loops a casual arm around his shoulders after practice – keeps failing at this, as well as everything else.

As if that isn’t enough, putting on the act’s made harder when sometime halfway past his fourteenth birthday, his body decides to grow like a weed in all directions. Pretending to be himself wouldn’t be so difficult if his legs didn’t stretch what feels like inches every day until he’s suddenly taking up too much space in the world, his jeans halfway up his shins when he tries them on for the first time in weeks. The new height skews his balance in practice until his feet go from under him every time he lunges for a forehand, his mother murmuring sympathy as she dabs antiseptic on the grazes over his palms, his father impassive over her shoulder as he waits to resume the practice.

His father’s silent disappointment in Sascha’s growth spurt is there in the extra sprints he makes him run, in the way he looks him over each morning with a measuring gaze as if to judge how far from ideal Sascha’s grown overnight. They all but live in a tennis club, live the rest of the time on the tennis tour; Sascha knows the stats. Height is good in tennis but not too much, and Sascha’s body keeps piling on the centimetres, already not far off Mischa’s six foot two inches and showing no signs of slowing as he creeps inexorably toward what’s _ideal_ and looks set to sail past it.

He can’t fix his body – can’t make himself small again no matter how much he hunches down his newly-awkward shoulders. Instead he combines adjusting to his new balance with avoiding Mischa, spending long hours at practice and then making excuses to go back out, pretending he’s doing schoolwork in the library or meeting his old hockey friends to see a movie.

But rather than catching the bus into town, he’ll pick up the racquet he leaves hidden behind the bins in the alleyway at the back of the house and go back to the club. He avoids the main entrance where he might be spotted and creeps in through a gap in the rusted chainlink fence instead, pushing through the tangled overgrowth to the old indoor court that was abandoned when the club built the new facility nearer the car park. There’s no lights and dirt layers a patina over the windows that aren’t broken, tendrils of ivy forming curling shadows in the corners but the kind summer sunlight slants down through a ragged hole in the roof until late and there’s no one to hear him hitting forehands against the crumbling brick for hours, neglected court gone to grit and cracks beneath his trainers but still solid. The steady _thwack_ of the ball on his racquet echoes over and over like a metronome, the familiarity soothing as he focuses on his swing without the distracting pull of his father’s stare at the side of the court, the comforting lack of an audience meaning when he misses he can try again, taking the time to get it right.

Gradually, day after day, he misses less.

If he gets better, there won’t be any need to avoid Mischa’s questions because he won’t have anything to hide. There’ll be no more silences at the dinner table, no worry that someone will notice how stiff he is sometimes on serve because his father won’t need to be disappointed in him any more.

 _Get better,_ he thinks viciously as he hammers forehands into the wall, puffs of flaking plaster-and-brick dust coating the ball and his hands until it’s like sandpaper wrapped around the racquet grip. The faster he gets better, the faster everything will go back to normal.

For a month he thinks it’s working. The bruises fade and it’s easier to smile; Sascha makes the semi-finals of a junior tournament and the atmosphere in the house eases perceptibly. Mischa stops asking why Sascha’s falling into bed so exhausted he can barely walk straight, why he drags himself up in the mornings with dark circles as if he hadn’t slept at all.

Sascha starts to think it might be okay after all.

He’s forgotten that Mischa’s always had more sense than to press a losing tactic. His brother’s always been able to identify the better percentage shot even if he can’t make the winner; he’s tried Sascha and their father and got nowhere, which leaves only one angle of attack. With summer winding toward autumn once again, the light aging sweetly into low-slanted sunsets that gild the walls of the abandoned court in bronze, late one Tuesday Sascha’s in the showers in the locker room at the club. He’s washing off the brick dust after another secret practice session, before he walks home at the time the movie he’d said he was going to see would’ve ended.

He’d risked the shower because it was late on a weeknight, the club almost empty but as he flicks off the water he hears the locker room door open and a burst of familiar voices that make him freeze.

The first is their mother, the steady cadence of her voice unmistakable. She’s halfway through what sounds like an exasperated response – probably why she’s forgotten again that she isn’t allowed in the men’s locker room – quiet but clear over the half-door of Sascha’s shower stall.

‘Mischa you have to stop worrying,’ she’s saying. ‘It is nothing you have done because there is nothing wrong. Sascha is a teenager now; of course he is not going to want to spend so much time with his brother over his friends.’

‘Sascha’s not a normal teenager,’ Mischa answers and Sascha knows he doesn’t mean it as an insult – Sascha himself calls normal teenagers, stuck in school five days a week, _boring_ – but it hurts like a slap anyway. ‘It was practically overnight. What if something happened?’

‘Something did happen,’ their mother says and Sascha’s heart thuds painfully against his ribs, reaching blindly for the wall to hold himself up. After all this if she _knows_ -

‘He made the decision to focus on his tennis, that’s what happened,’ she finishes. ‘You know what he’s like when he’s set his mind to something, you see how he gave up the hockey and everything else. He’s training harder so he is more tired now, that is all. He doesn’t see his friends at hockey and football, so when he has free time he goes to meet them instead of hanging around with his embarrassing family. It’s normal.’

‘Maybe.’ Mischa sounds reluctant. ‘I still think there’s something wrong.’

‘Your father says he’s fine and they spend the most time together. Sascha would tell us if he was unhappy.’ Their mother pauses, a note of finality entering her tone. ‘Leave him alone, Mischa. He’s trying to work out how to be a tennis player and a teenager and he doesn’t need to be pressured by his big brother. Give him time to get there.’

Their father had said: _don’t tell your mother, she trained differently, she won’t understand how it’ll help you be better._ Sascha had known that meant _she’ll put a stop to it_ and he’d accepted the necessity for subterfuge; he didn’t want to end up tooling around the Challenger circuit with a ranking of eight hundred for his whole career because he was too soft to take the training.

He’d also known, with the ingrained wariness of a prodigy in a highly competitive sport, that meant _don’t tell anyone,_ Mischa included.

Listening to his brother try to convince their mother that something is in fact wrong, Sascha – awkward, a little more miserable than he thought anyone had noticed before now – sits on the wet tiles in his shower cubicle, shivering, arms tucked around his knees that are still stubbornly-thin knobbles despite the hours of sprints, and realises as he waits for them to leave that he doesn’t just need to be a better tennis player.

He needs to be a better liar.

 

Irina’s intervention buys him time, during which Sascha keeps working at being happier as if it’s just another shot to perfect in practice, a set of footwork he can repeat over and over until it’s an automatic reflex. He smiles so hard that his cheeks ache at the end of the day, even though he still can’t get his forehand working as fast as his father tells him it should be. He beats Mischa at chess and on their travel-battered Playstation, takes a few nights off from the abandoned court to play back garden tennis, trying to beat his brother well into the sepia-toned sunsets until it’s almost like old times.

He mostly manages not to screw up too badly in practice or on court and if the tension he carries, layered between the fading bruises on his back, doesn’t ease much, then he at least starts to think he might be fooling everyone that he’s back to normal.

But Mischa’s always been more patient than him. Nine extra years of match tactics on tour makes him better at pretending he isn’t simply biding his time, waiting for the right moment to pounce and Sascha always forgets too soon, thinking he has control of the rally only for his backhand to come back with interest and get dumped into the net.

When it comes it’s four weeks after the locker room — right before the almost-fifth time, Sascha having screwed up again. He trudges out of their parents’ room where he’d been sent to fetch the belt, to find his brother home early from practice with a sprained ankle, leaning against the wall in the hallway while their mother clatters around the kitchen looking for ice. 

When Mischa, baffled, asks why Sascha’s holding their father’s belt, Sascha stumbles over an excuse about his jeans being too big and Mischa gives him the suspicious look he’d almost stopped wearing the last few weeks.

‘I didn’t realise you’d dropped that much weight, Sash,’ he says and the genuine concern in his voice immediately brings the hot smart of tears behind Sascha’s eyes. ‘Look, not to sound like a broken record but are you sure you’re okay? If you’re working too hard, I mean it when I keep telling you that you’re allowed to ease up a bit. It’s not a crime for a kid to eat a piece of cake, no matter what Dad says.’

For the space of a breath, a lifetime and an eternity, Sascha thinks he really is about to cry. If he cries – if he breaks, now when he doesn’t from the bruises any more – he knows he doesn’t have the words to smooth it over and the whole story will come flooding out.

Sometimes, (always) on the day after when he’s craning his neck to see the blooming stripes of black and blue across his back in the bathroom mirror, chair wedged under the door handle because the lock doesn’t quite catch securely, he feels as though he might suffocate with the need to tell someone. The secret feels like a weight he carries around beneath his ribs, lodged awkwardly as if someone stuck a tennis ball in there for safekeeping without bothering to check first if there was enough space. His tennis isn’t consistently improving, progress fading as the incentive of the bruises do, still moving stiffer when he heals because he’s haunted by the muscle-memory of hurt on the stretch for every serve.

But his mother says his bones ache because he’s growing, his father that he’s building muscle and that’s why his skin doesn’t feel as if it fits right. _Trust the process_ they both say and, while Sascha knows that means something different for each of them, if he falters now he knows he’ll always wonder how good he could’ve been if he’d held his tongue.

So — ‘I’ll eat cake when I’m world number one,’ he says with all the lazy arrogance he can muster and smirks at his brother when he gets an eye roll in response. ‘It’s not so unbelievable. _Some_ people know how to run without falling over our own ankles.’

‘Do they? Maybe those people can teach you how to run to the net in time to make volleys,’ Mischa shoots back. The smile with it is half-teasing, half still concerned as he gives his little brother a searching once-over. ‘Seriously though Sash, if you need to slow down-’

‘I’m _fine,_  it’s you who all need to speed up!’ Sascha retorts. Perhaps too vehemently because there’s a surprised flinch before Mischa’s expression goes stubborn, assuming the Responsible Big Brother face he only puts on when Sascha’s acting up.

He takes a breath – the argument already formed in his frown, ready to keep pushing – and Sascha knows it’s too late to run, that he’ll crumple under the pressure if he’s asked enough questions that he doesn’t have the lies to answer. The belt leather’s going damp against his clenched fingers, and it’s already hard to fit in enough air around the tennis ball-lump in his chest.

If he tells it’ll ruin everything, Mischa will shout and their mother will be furious, but maybe in the aftermath he’ll be able to breathe-

Which is when, before Mischa gets further than ‘You’ve been-’, Irina comes bustling out of the kitchen with her hands full of ice and towels, chiding Mischa for not sitting down with his foot up yet and calling for her husband to come out of hiding in the lounge, to lend his son a shoulder to get him as far as the couch. In the fuss Sascha slips away – ducking from his father’s warning glance as he catches sight of Sascha while he helps Mischa into the lounge, ignoring the protests from his eldest son that he walked no problem from the car. He shakes his head slightly until Sascha steps backward, back into his parents’ room.

When he tucks the belt into the space it’d just come from in the drawer, coiled neatly between socks and shirts, his hands shake. His fingertips trail fresh dark smears of sweat over the leather.

He knows next time he’s asked will be easier, the lies coming smoother just like practicing his backhand, until he doesn’t have to worry about letting anything spill out accidentally. Now he’s kept his mouth shut for the first time, it’s a dare to himself not to break his streak.

But he knows his brother; Mischa’s not going to let it go for a throwaway _I’m fine_ and pretending to be happy isn’t working. Sascha has to come up with a better lie _._

He shuts the drawer carefully to avoid making a sound, pads on silent feet back into the hallway.

When he sidles into the lounge he can hear Mischa complaining about the cold, their mother’s retort that it’s _ice –_ would he rather that she warm it up in the microwave, or would he rather not have an ankle the size of a balloon tomorrow? Sascha hesitates in the doorway taking in his brother on the couch, his bare foot up on a chair and grimacing as Irina packs towel-wrapped ice around his swollen ankle.

‘If you were looking where you were going, you would not trip over the racquet you dropped yourself,’ she chides, tone brusque but her hands are careful, sympathetic when she pats her eldest son’s knee. ‘You stay there and I’ll check on how your father is doing with lunch. It’s only sandwiches but he’ll set something on fire anyway, you know he should not be left unsupervised in the kitchen. Sascha,’ she adds as she straightens, a little stiff on tennis-worn knees; Sascha barely stops himself flinching. He hadn’t realised she’d spotted him. ‘Sit with your brother, make sure he doesn’t get off this sofa.’

Sascha sees Mischa’s eyes flick to him. Knows his brother’s waiting on him to protest, to sidestep and duck the outstretched hand of his family as he’s been doing the last ten or so months as if he’s afraid the faintest touch might burn.

As sweetly as he can manage, he says, ‘Can I sit on him if he won’t listen?’

‘As long as it is not on his ankle, you have my permission to drop a house on him if he won’t keep that leg up,’ Irina agrees solemnly and shoots Mischa a glance before she leaves – possibly nothing, a final warning not to move, but Sascha gets the impression from Mischa’s answering frown that it’s the punctuation to a conversation they’d been having earlier. Another conversation about him, maybe the reason Mischa had been distracted enough to trip in the first place and Sascha’s heartbeat stutters like the flutter of panicked bird wings against his ribs, unquantifiably nervous as he pads across the room in his worn socks and drops down beside Mischa on the couch.

Mischa tenses. Sascha pretends not to notice.

‘Does it hurt?’ he asks, quiet, gesturing at the ice-bound ankle.

His brother exhales, slowly. Sascha can almost hear him testing out and discarding responses, wary that the slightest slip might spur Sascha into pulling away – that it has, for months.

‘Not much,’ he says after a minute. It’s clear from the strain in his voice that it’s at minimum fifty percent a lie. Mischa’s never been one to complain but he’s lost so much this year already, disaster after disaster stacking up, and they all know what an injury this late in the season could mean. The hollow echo of the knowledge is in his voice when he adds, ‘I only rolled it a bit. It’ll be fine.’

Sascha nods and, with ease that feels like trespassing after so long, pulls his feet up to tuck himself into a ball, curling into the warmth of Mischa’s side. They used to watch movies like this, on this same sagging couch, when Sascha was young enough to have fewer boundaries, fewer bruises, fewer knees and elbows that seem to poke in all the wrong directions.

He’s pushing the brink of too big for it after his recent growth spurt, all awkward too-long limbs, but he tucks his elbows in to make it work and, after a startled pause, Mischa drops a tentative arm around his shoulders.

‘...What’s up, kiddo?’ he asks softly.

‘I’m sorry I said you didn’t know how to run without falling over,’ Sascha says, his head on Mischa’s shoulder so it comes out half-muffled into his sweaty practice shirt. ‘I didn’t mean it.’

‘I know.’

‘And I’m sorry about your ankle.’

‘Pretty sure you didn’t personally trip me with the racquet but thank you.’

Sascha swallows, twisting his fingers in the hem of his brother’s shirt to stop them trembling. ‘And- and I’m sorry that I’ve been such a jerk this year.’

‘That’s okay,’ Mischa says after another pause. He’s using the tone Sascha half-remembers from when he was little and still frightened of thunder, low and soft as if he’s coaxing a wild animal that’s liable to bolt. ‘...You want to tell me why?’

Sascha mutely shakes his head; he doesn’t _want_ to. But there’s the sound of plates clattering from the kitchen, Irina teasing their father for cutting the sandwiches crooked and any second now their parents will walk back into the lounge. In the flurry of practice and tournaments and schoolwork, Sascha might not get this opportunity again.

The best lies are the ones that are half true.

All on one breath, in a rush, he says, ‘I don’t think it’s working.’

Mischa’s arm tightens reassuringly around his shoulders. ‘What isn’t?’

‘It- training. You’ve had such a bad year and I’m training like you did, with Dad, and you’ve not won a Slam yet, and it made me think — maybe I’m not doing the right things. Maybe I’m going to be messed up before I even start. I’m trying to train harder but it’s _not working_ and Dad just tells me to-’

‘Trust the process,’ Mischa finishes for him when Sascha’s voice cracks. ‘Oh Sash. Have you been panicking about this all year?’

No. Maybe a little bit. Not just this _._ The litany of honesty rallies back and forth in Sascha’s thoughts, all the things he could reply and every one with a consequence trailing behind it, requiring more awkward explanations that skirt too close to what he’s trying not to say.

In the end he only nods, bumping his chin against Mischa’s chest.

‘Hey, look,’ Mischa says, still in that careful tone, words pressed close to the tangled mess of Sascha’s hair to keep it just between them, ‘you know that’s not how tennis works, right? I’ve been injured and you already train harder than I ever did — too hard I think, and I know Mum and Dad don’t see it that way but we all know you’re working as hard as you can. You’re your own player, you’re going to have your own career and you’re doing all the right things to get there. That’s all you can do.’

Sascha’s voice seems stuck somewhere around the tennis ball-sized lump between his ribs. It takes an enormous effort to dig it up to whisper,

‘You think Dad’s training me the right way?’

‘I think Dad did everything he could for me and my not winning Grand Slams yet has nothing to do with how he coached me at fourteen.’ Mischa pokes Sascha gently in the chest, directly over the patter-skip of his heartbeat. ‘You on the other hand have all the chances of winning Slams and being world number one and beating every one of Roger’s inhuman records, but that’s not going to happen for years. Not even if you give up sleep and train twenty-four hours a day. You’re doing all the right things, I promise. Dad could do with easing up on you sometimes – I keep trying to tell him – but he does know how to coach tennis.’

There’s a distant ringing sound in Sascha’s ears, as if trying to understand what he’s hearing is making him dizzy. For a wild, heart-racing moment he wonders if Mischa already knows about everything and he’s trying to say he thinks it’s the right approach, without wanting to spell the specifics out loud – but no, he hadn’t known what the belt was for.

Sascha struggles with himself for the span of three, hiccuped breaths, his urge to blurt out the whole story warring with Mischa’s easygoing certainty that their father is coaching him the right way. If he is, if Mischa’s so sure, then that must include the last year too, and everything that was in it. Maybe even if he tells his brother everything, Mischa might nod and say _that’s the right approach._

Or he might shout and interfere, and then Sascha would never know if it would’ve worked after all.

Sascha wants to win that Slam more than anything. His father didn’t use the belt with Mischa – _too soft_ he’d murmured back in the autumn – and if this is the difference, if this is what it takes to be a champion and his father knows that, then Sascha has to live with it.

At least- he can try.

With a tremendous effort, he swallows against the band of tightness around his chest and says, ‘Okay,’

The wobble he’d tried to steady must have crept into his voice anyway because Mischa pokes him in the shoulder, insistently as if he wants Sascha’s attention, for him to look up. There’s concern in his tone now, breaking open the softness of it when he says, ‘You don’t seem sure about that, Sash.’

‘I am. I- wasn’t sure but if you say it’ll work.’ Despite his brother angling to try to catch sight of his expression Sascha keeps his head down, tucked onto Mischa’s solid shoulder. The fabric’s damp beneath his cheek but that could be sweat, or the condensation from his breathing, anything at all. He has to hold it together when the fifth time is still waiting for him, the belt coiled interrupted and patient in the drawer in the next room.

This time – the fifth time – was going to be for the tantrum he’d thrown on court in France last week, when he tried and tried and still lost the second set to love, bad call after call going against him. He’d heaped insults on the man umpiring the match, barely resisted screaming that every mistake was a bruise Sascha was going to wear in a futile attempt to make the man less _stupid,_ or at the least more sympathetic, both hopeless as he’d been deducted point after point until he couldn’t have won the match even if Federer played the rest of it for him. Sascha had made a spectacle of himself until even his opponent was staring at him in disbelief across the court; his father won’t forget.

Sascha, looking back at his own behaviour in the aftermath, made the decision somewhere scrunched down deep and dark where his shame sits, that he thinks he might deserve this one.

‘I’m fine, Mischa,’ he insists when his brother doesn’t say anything. ‘I believe you.’

Mischa’s silence is loud with skepticism. After a minute where Sascha can almost hear the whir of his thoughts churning he asks, unexpected:

‘Would it help to try a different coach?’

In their house, of long tennis ancestry and stretching every euro three times further than market value to cover more flights, more hotels, of their father’s certainty in the success of his own strict training, even to suggest alternative coaches skirts dangerously close to blasphemy. Sascha’s so surprised that he jolts upright, almost head butting Mischa in the chin; he stares at his brother who’s levelled a questioning look at him, without any trace of a smile to suggest that he’s joking.

‘What?!’ Sascha demands. His voice skates out of the question into panic, pitching over the break to something deeper in a way that’s been happening lately. ‘Dad wouldn’t like it — and we can’t afford it.’

‘You make it sound like we’re starving under a bridge.’ Mischa rolls his eyes, all tolerant amusement. ‘I did all right for myself last year, remember? This is upsetting you and I have a vested interest in not sharing a room with Oscar the Grouch any more. The sour faces are messing up my zen. If you think trying a different coach, even for a few months, is what you need then I’ll make it happen. Let me worry about Dad.’

Because he says it easily, as if it wouldn’t be a case of moving mountains and arctic silences across the battlefield of family dinners for months, Sascha allows himself to hope for a moment — to imagine what it could be like:

Someone new breaking into the united front they’d formed between them all, on tour – the tournament officials who noted them on the credential lists as _the Zverevs times four_ , all of them splitting apart for Mischa to play here and Sascha to trudge reluctantly back to school there, their father ricocheting between them and their mother the magnetic centre of gravity they circled around across the distances but always, always drawing them back in – letting someone all brand-new break into that to suggest, perhaps, Sascha shouldn’t be wincing when he reached up to serve.

Someone Sascha could whisper to in a locker room somewhere in the world, unmapped and potential, how his father trained him, to ask if he should be questioning it. If this is something all the best players do without making a big deal of it, if Sascha should stop staring at the crisscross bruises stark against his pale back until his neck hurts from twisting to see, until he sees the black and blue latticework of his failures imprinted behind his eyelids when he’s trying to sleep.

It wouldn’t ruin everything if it was someone being paid to help Sascha get better. He only has the broad strokes of an idea how paying coaches works, gleaned from conversations with other juniors who made sympathetic noises about having his dad ordering him around on court, but with a coach being paid to put up with him he could ask them not to tell. Say that he only wanted to check if it was something other players did, if it would _help._

It’s a shining temptation of an idea.

But — no matter who Mischa hired, Sascha knows they couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret like this. And even Sascha, left out of the hushed money conversations overheard from the next room when his parents think he isn’t listening, knows what Mischa’s brushing off – as casually as he dismisses his losses this year as _just a blip_ if anyone asks, the money he’d made on his good run last year is being whittled slowly but surely down the longer he goes without a run of wins.

Inviting in a new coach – a coach good enough to stand a chance of being approved by their father – could mean wiping it out entirely.

Sascha couldn’t tell any new coach the truth, because if they reacted badly then he’d have asked his brother to spend money he needs for flights and hotels if he ever wants to win again, and thrown it away as surely as if he’d tossed every last cent in the river Elbe.

The temptation sinks into the weight tucked beneath his ribs and quietly dies. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he says with an effort, summoning up the innately superior tone of an indulged younger sibling, ‘you said it, Dad knows what he’s doing, I just need to stick it out. It would be a waste of your money.’

‘But-’

‘ _Mischaaaa,’_ Sascha says with a put-upon sigh, ‘I’m _fine_ , really I am.’

Mischa eyes him, wary. ‘Do you promise that you mean that?’

‘Yes,’ Sascha says without letting himself hesitate. His throat feels raw as if he’s swallowed too-hot coffee, as if the lie is trying to wedge itself in there instead of coming out, but he can hear their parents gathering up plates in the kitchen; any second now they’ll walk into the lounge. Sascha has this one chance to stop Mischa pushing this until everything falls apart.

‘I promise I’m fine with Dad coaching me,’ he says. He meets his brother’s concern with a smile that sits awkward around his mouth, but his voice doesn’t break at all. ‘He knows what he’s doing. And I don’t want to give you the excuse of a new coach being an unfair advantage every time I beat you,’ he adds, managing to make it sly, and when their parents walk in a minute later they’re faced with a full-on tickle war in progress on the couch, Sascha pinned to the cushions, yelling around helpless laughter as Mischa goes for his sides and both of them ignoring their mother’s exasperated cry to be careful of Mischa’s ankle.

After that, Sascha keeps reminding himself to smile a hundred times a day and Mischa stops asking what’s wrong. Sascha silently takes the bruises for the match in France, and the next in Florida, and when he acts up in training; when Mischa drops down the ranks to lose at Challengers Sascha takes their father’s cool frustration too, biting his lip as each failure gets layered into his skin.

It all blends together, in the end. After, after the memory of temptation and how close he came to ruining everything for all of them, he stops counting how many times it happens. Instead he starts counting how many times he almost tells – but doesn’t.

He can win at that. Even if he doesn’t end up winning at anything else.


End file.
